The present invention relates to the field of computer based cabinet design, principally, the location of utility openings in cabinets.
Software packages are commonly used to design kitchen cabinets and arrange those cabinet designs within a specific kitchen. Companies or individuals that build custom cabinets either for new construction or remodeling commonly use these software packages.
A typical package allows for the adjustment of many variables in the design of a cabinet including the size, number of shelves, doors, drawers, etc. These packages also allow holes or other openings to be placed in the back, sides, or bottom of the cabinet. These types of holes are frequently added to the cabinet design to provide adequate openings or clearances for utilities such as water pipes, drains, vents, electrical connections, etc.
If utilities that require clearance holes exist in the kitchen, the programmer using the software must determine the size and location of the holes on a particular cabinet design. They must then create a modification to the current cabinet design or create a new cabinet design that contains the required clearance holes. When these cabinets are later added to the kitchen design, the necessary clearance holes for utilities are in place.
Another common occurrence is an exposed pipe or other utility on the outside of a kitchen wall. To accommodate this pipe, the cabinets placed against that wall must be modified to provide clearance for this utility. This is commonly done by notching the sides of the cabinet box and, either moving the cabinet-back forward to provide clearance, or building a box around the pipe inside the cabinet. Again, using current technology, the programmer using the software must create a special cabinet that contains the modifications needed to allow for the exposed pipe.
Yet another requirement is to provide clearance holes through adjoining cabinet sides for the passage of utilities, pipes or electric lines. Common examples of this include connecting a microwave to a remote electrical outlet, connecting a garbage disposal to a dishwasher in an adjoining cabinet or running a water line through the sides of several cabinets to an icemaker in a refrigerator. Again, current technology requires that these clearance holes be added to each individual cabinet in the design process.
This approach has many disadvantages. It requires significant programming time to create the modified versions of existing cabinet designs. It requires a high skill level on the part of the programmer to determine the exact size and location of the clearance holes and errors are common. Once the modified cabinet design is placed in a kitchen layout, it cannot be moved or adjusted because the clearance holes will not be properly located. The modified cabinet design with the clearance holes will likely only be used once.
The present invention addresses these shortcomings and offers a method of adding clearance holes that is simple, accurate, fast and flexible.
The principal object of the present invention is to provide a method for locating utility openings and wall protrusions in kitchen cabinets during the design phase. Another object is to provide a method for automatically relocating utility openings and wall protrusions in the proper location when cabinets are moved within a kitchen layout during the design process.
The invention accomplishes these objects and overcomes the aforementioned problems by providing a method for designing a kitchen wherein the information relating to the location and clearance requirements for utility components and wall protrusions is inputted into a computer, the cabinets of the kitchen are then placed over the utility components and protrusions, and the computer automatically removes the clearances portions of the cabinets to accommodate the utility components and protrusions. If the user desires to view a different design of the same kitchen layout, the information relating to the utility locations and clearance requirements remain in the layout information. When different cabinets are placed over the utilities, the computer removes portions of the new cabinets to accommodate the utilities that remained in the layout. This allows the user to view several designs of the kitchen without having to re-input the information relating to the utilities and their associated clearances. Also, the method aids in preventing a designer from leaving out a utility clearance portion in a cabinet after several design changes.